Monday, Apr. 21, 2003
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius: Buying a drier, posted at 10:41 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Well, it's back to school tomorrow. I'm ready for them. It should be a good day, as I'm all caught up with grading and my lessons are planned.I'm considering buying a drier. I'm broke, but this seems like an intelligent investment right now. My roommate has a washer and a drier, but the drier is electric, and there is no electric drier hookup in the basement. To put one in would cost upwards of $250. It's not the landlord's job to provide that, and I'm not about to even put half of that down. Rather, I think I'd rather spend that same amount on a drier, so that I have something to take with me when I move. There is a gas hookup all ready to go down there. Right now, both my roommate and I have tons of wet clothes hanging everywhere in the basement. It's making for an annoying walk to the bathroom down there, as now there are clothes hazards everywhere. The place is a mess. It's getting really old trucking all of my clothes to the laundromat, and buying a drier would pay for itself in about 20 laundromat visits.
We'll see. I think I'm going to save up and do it. First major purchase will be replacing the tires on my car (the insurance claims guy classified them as "dangerous"), then my electricty/heating bill, then the sunroof, then the drier. It will probably take a few paychecks to pull off that feat, but I'm going to give it a whirl. Living with a washer and drier is a luxury I haven't had in eight years (holy shit, it's been eight years since I graduated high school).
In other news, my animals are amusing me to no end lately. While Holden was inprisoned for ten days, I moved my bed against the wall rather than in the middle of my room. Now, Tobey always sleeps on the bottom left hand corner of the bed, before and after the move. Holden slept on the bottom right hand corner. However, now there's a wall there, and Holden doesn't like to be crammed in between my legs and the wall. Therefore, generally Holden and Tobey both sleep on the bottom left hand corner of the bed. However, Holden doesn't like to sleep next to Tobey. I think there is still part of him in that little dog mind of his that doesn't trust Tobey enough to close his eyes right next to him. Tobey doesn't help out matters any with his occasional playful swipes at Holden's tail, which freaks Holden out to no end.
So, last night, Holden gets up and begins trying to lay on his usual bottom right hand corner, farther away from Tobey. However, my feet are there. He walks around in a circle like dogs do, trying to find a spot to lay, but my legs are there and I'm not about to move them so my dog can wimp out and not sleep next to the cat. I mean, he's a dog. He's struggling with his circles, then looks up at me with this dejected look in his eyes.
"I'm sorry, Holden, but you're a big boy and you can sleep next to the kitty if you want to have the privelage of sleeping up here on the bed."
He continued to try to lay on my legs, so I pointed him to his spot.
"That big bad kitty won't hurt you if you sleep next to him, you big baby." After he plopped down, pretty much on my legs, I had to pull him up away from me so my poor legs could respirate. Still, even with Holden all sprawled out and Tobey in his little ball, there was still space in between them. I don't know what he's worrying about.
Yes, I actually had this conversation with my dog in my bed. Then I reached over, gently mussed up Tobey's fur, and said, "See that, Tobey? Poor Holden wis a wittle bit scared of you, you big tough kitty" and he actually meowed in reply. As he usually does. My cat talks to me like there's no tomorrow. He's currently laying in his new favorite spot on top of the computer monitor as I type.
Gosh, I need to get a life.
At least I know that when I'm an old man and living alone, I'll still have my animals to amuse me. I'm turning into the male version of Caroline Knapp (and, by the way, if you go to that link, I highly recommend that book).
***
Currently reading:
I didn't fulfill my goal of reading two novels during spring break, but I read about a hundred pages each of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Drift: A Novel. A.H.W.O.S.G. is living up to its title so far. I laughed outloud a number of times today as I read it on the eliptical (ran 2 miles, went 30 minutes on eliptical afterwards). The book is fascinating and clever, sometimes in a too-clever way (a 20 page introduction by the author, but even that's funny, as he says things like, "The book gets a bit uneven after page 109."), but mostly in a laugh-out-loud with pathos type of way. I'm also getting through Drift: A Novel, the Latino Catcher in the Rye book I picked up on a whim last week. I lost steam with it because I lost it for a couple of days, but found it in a grocery bag (don't ask) yesterday and roared through a few chapters. Great voice that one has. I don't usually read two books at once, but it's working out just fine. I'm slowly but surely reading for pleasure again, which is a good feeling. I also like that both of these books are by young male authors and have young (in Drift, he's 16; in A.H.W.O.S.G, he's 22) male narrators in them. I just think I read too many chick books. It probably seems that way because every book in the 9th grade curriculum has a female narrator/author. Or that I often like to read the books that my students are reading (books like B-More Careful), because it's always nice to have literary conversations with students even if it's not with assigned reading. Next year, we're balancing the curriculum out a little bit better, so 9th grade isn't the chick year and 10th grade isn't the sausagefest year. Don't worry, though, that's not how I presented my argument in the department meeting. We're moving Their Eyes Were Watching God to 10th grade and adding A Lesson Before Dying to the 9th grade, plus doing a lot of other stuff that scares the hell out of me (teach Oedipus to 9th graders?!?!). Okay, I'm out of here.